The first episode of The Beatles: Get Back debuted on November 25, 2021—which might be the only undeniable certainty of the endeavor. The three-episode docuseries enjoyed near-universal acclaim, sweeping almost every awards competition in which it was nominated, including the collection of five coveted Primetime Emmy Awards. The Beatles: Get Back was directed by Peter Jackson, the esteemed filmmaker behind The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–3) and They Shall Not Grow Old (2018), a visual masterwork about the First World War and the director’s debut as a documentarian. For the latter project, Jackson drew upon original, largely unseen footage housed in the archives of London’s Imperial War Museum. Working with materials that were more than a century old, Jackson and his team painstakingly restored the footage to afford twenty-first-century audiences a soldier’s-eye view of the Great War.

In its extended cut, They Shall Not Grow Old clocked in at...

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